War of the Wolves
by Rapuung
Summary: Surrender is not an option for the earthbenders of Ba Sing Se. A young Earthbender arrives in the city seeking refuge, but soon learns of a plot orchestrated by a beautiful princess to ensnare an Earth General's army into a deathtrap.
1. Chapter 1

Ba Sing Se was the most heavily fortified city in the world. Built on a hill in the middle of an open field of solid bedrock, the city jutted from the horizon like a proud, earthen crown, impregnable and impassable. The walls of Ba Sing Se were legendary. Everywhere in all four nations, from the Water Tribes to the Fire Nation, _walls like Ba Sing Se_ was a euphemism for impenetrability. When his mother had scolded him as a child, she would often compare Haru to his father, saying that they both had heads "as thick as Ba Sing Se's wall." Well, if Haru's head had really been that thick, he wouldn't have a hastily bandaged cut on his forehead that was annoyingly dripping blood into his eyes, and it was for those ancient, impenetrable walls that Haru now galloped, pinning all his hope and dreams—indeed his very life—on reaching those walls.

He had always yearned to walk atop the walls of Ba Sing Se. Now, it was more than a dream. It was more than a possibility. It was more than a reality. Now, it was a matter of self-preservation.

Haru a handful of other Earthbenders who had escaped the Fire Nation along with him raced across the desert field in the shadow of Ba Sing Se, the snorting rhinos of Fire Nation cavalry hot on their heels. The hell for leather pace that they had taken since fleeing the Fire Nation army in the forest so many miles ago was beginning to take its toll on their emu horses, and Haru didn't know how much further their proto-avian mounts could possibly take them before they keeled over. Domestic mounts would have long ago reached heir breaking point, and would have flatly refused to run another step. These emus, however, bred for Earth Kingdom cavalry, were trained for just his sort of exertion. They would run themselves literally to death, stopping only when their legs gave out.

That breaking point, the point when even their finely bred animals would no longer be capable of carrying them, was fat approaching. Haru couldn't see the other Earthbenders trough the cloud of dust that they had kicked up, but his own emu was lathering. He assumed that the other mounts were equally as tired.

Another plasma-hot ball of fire landed ahead and to the left of him, exploding in an incandescent wave of energy and heat. It had missed the Earthbenders by a considerable margin, but Haru could feel the sudden wave of intense heat wash over him, and he was showered with tiny flecks of red hot rock that singles his rough spun tunic and leggings.

So far, the primary advantage of the Earthbenders had been in the speed of their emus over that of the rhinos use by the Fire Nation, but that advantage was being negated by shear exhaustion. Haru and his haggard band had been riding for two days straight, without rest or food. Their water skins were almost empty. They didn't have enough water for themselves, let alone their animals. Ba Sing Se as only a few moments away. Once inside the city walls, they could have all the water they needed.

Thinking about water led, as it always did, to thoughts of that Water Tribe girl who had freed him for the Fire Nation prison barge almost a year ago. She had been breathtaking, and the sensual way her body had undulated and swayed when manipulating her element had never strayed far from Haru's mind. However, this fantasy of Katara was different.

For one thing, her clothes were on.

Another difference was the consistency of the daydream. Daydreams about pretty waterbenders were not uncommon, but typically they had possessed the consistency of daydreams. They had been fantasies, thick like pudding. However, this sudden flash of Katara's image was different. It was thin, shimmering, with the consistency of broth. And, far from being seductive, her expression looked anxious, almost as if she were warning him away form the city.

_Is this it?_ Haru asked himself as he galloped for Ba Sing Se with the Fire Nation fast gaining on him. _Is this death in its truest form? These Firebenders won't make me a slave; they'll make me a corpse. What I want isn't a daydream. My mind just wants to show me a pretty face one more time before I die. _

Time seemed to slow down for Haru. All sound was muted, save for the sound of the wind that was roaring in his ears. The other Earthbenders thundered past him, but Haru, slowed his emu to a stop, and cantered around to face the oncoming Fir Nation horde.

Alone.

He stepped down off of his emu, which quickly folded its legs and dropped to the ground, exhausted, resting. Haru knew that he would never again be able to coax the emu to stand and run. That was okay. Haru had no expectations of escape. For the Earthbenders to reach Ba Sing Se, something had to slow the firebenders down.

Haru had learned everything he knew of earthbending from his father, and his father had taught him well. He braced his legs and stood there, rooted to the ground, in the path of the Fir Nation cavalry.

There were two score of them, all told, with no telling how many of them were firebenders. They were getting closer now. Haru could see their steel faceplates shining in the light of the setting sun. He couldn't hear their hoof beats, or their curses or their battle cries. He couldn't hear the clatter of their weapons or the rattle of their armor. The wind was in his ears and in his lungs filling him with the scent of the earth.

Ultimately, the Fire Nation was doomed. Haru never would have entertained such a thought in the weeks or years before, but it swept into his mind now like it had always been their, and it had the cool certainty of a brisk ocean breeze. They lived on the earth. The earth was the Fire Nation's livelihood as well as the Earth King's. By declaring war on the earth, the Fire Nation had upset the balance. It didn't matter how many cities fell o the Fire Nation. It didn't mater if Omashu fell, or it the Fire Lord himself appeared at the gates of Ba Sing Se. Ultimately, the Earth would reject them. The Earth Kingdom would endure, somehow. It might never regain its former glory but, somehow, Haru knew that the balance would be restored. Just like he knew, with equal certainty that he would not be there to see it.

Haru knew that he could not hope to defeat the Fire Nation scourge chasing him now. He knew that he could not flee, for they would surely capture him, burn him alive, and then move on to kill his comrades before they reached the city. Hope would distract him. If he had any chance of surviving the next few minute, he needed to concentrate only on the present. He abandoned all thoughts of walking away from this battle.

He stored down the Fire Nation soldiers, and the soldiers stared at him with the primal bloodlust that can only awaken in battle. He had no more thoughts.

The first Fire Nation warrior to die was an officer with a handlebar mustache. He was twice Haru's age and twice his size. Age and experience, however, was no match for the twenty four pound rock that smashed his face and turned his head into pulp and bone fragments.

Haru stomped on the ground, freeing a boulder which he sent toward another fire bender with a sharp thrust of his hand. The firebender, who's hand's had already become engulfed with flame in preparation for burning Haru to the ground. The boulder caught the firebender in the torso and threw him off of his rhino with enough force to snap his spine.

Pillars exploded out of the ground like stalagmites and knocked riders off of heir rhinos. The rhinos themselves were far too heavy to be affect in the same way, but the powerful columns of earth battered them nonetheless, occasionally knocking them onto their sides, and, in a few fortunate (fortunate for Haru, anyway) cases striking them below the jaw and breaking their necks.

Several fireballs burned their way through the air towards the lone earthbender standing in their path, only to splash against the earthen shield that Haru had raised from the earth only seconds before. The makeshift barricade was as tall as Haru, and was as wide as it was tall. Haru slammed his fist into it, and a fist sized missile of rock blew off of the other side and impacted solidly with a mounted pikeman, either crippling on killing him.

Again and again and again he did it, shadow boxing against his self-made wall and sending chunk after chunk of rock into the advancing Fire Nation horde. Perhaps half a dozen fell, but Haru was making no discernable dent in the Fire Nation's numbers. They were only a few yards away now, close to overrunning him. Fires raged as fireball after flaming fireball detonated all around him.

Haru spread his legs in a wide horse stance and called upon the power of the earth to send the barricade itself at the firebenders, who were riding in tight formation. The stone wall struck what looked to be a sergeant and had roughly the effect of…well…a stone wall. The Sergeant and his rhino were stopped cold in mid gallop when the flat of the wall hit him and knocked him clean onto his back with enough kinetic force to rupture every organ in his body. Even the tough skinned rhino was dazed.

Now bereft of any cover, Haru braced his legs and _pushed_ outward with his hands. A fissure opened up between the fire nation soldiers and himself, and then slammed closed violently, forming a chest-high ridge with Haru atop it.

Haru dropped down behind the new made obstacle just as fireblasts started exploding against it.

He felt a nip against his sleeve and whirled around, ready to flatten whatever had touched him, then breathed a sigh of surprised relief as he saw that it was his emu horse; strangely back on its feet and nuzzling his arm anxiously.

"You want us to leave this place, don't you," Haru whispered, the spell over him broken. Sound returned to his ears, the wind vanished, and time returned to its normal speed once gain. The emu horse actually didn't want Haru to die. It was touching, and Haru actually had to fight back a tear as he mounted the emu and spurred the avian mount away.

Haru's barricade had slowed the ungainly rhinos more than he had expected, and he was soon out the firebenders' effective range. It was not long, though, before the firebenders overcame the pitiful obstacle and were giving chase once again.

Haru and his emu raced across the remaining stretch of land between the battlefield of ruptured earth and the Earth Kingdom's capital city. The firebenders were gaining on him again. They were all now within the shadow cast by the city's walls.

"Open the door!" Haru hollered to whoever might be listening up on the walls. The other earthbenders had disappeared, presumably having gone inside the city, so Haru assumed that ere must be some sort of sentry on the wall. "Let me in!"

There was no movement on the wall, and Haru realized with a skipped heartbeat that the Earth Capital would not open its gates with Fire Nation soldiers so close. He would have to make his own entry.

Never slowing down, he closed his eyes and gathered his chi. The walls of Ba Sing Se were ancient and solid, designed to hold off an entire army. It had not, however, been designed with defense against fellow earthbenders in mind. It was made of rock, just as most other Earth Kingdom fortifications were, and such a massive wall could not stop a single intruder so much as it could halt and army.

Haru could feel the wall. He could feel the structure and build of the wall, every pebble and every masonry stone. He could feel it all with a clarity that he could never have achieved had his life not been in such dire jeopardy. With an explosion of will and a mighty cry, Haru thrust both hands forward and made a sweeping motion, as if he were clearing off a cluttered desk. Every muscle in his body was straining, and his spirit was crying out for rest, but his mind and his heart refused to relent, imbued as they were with the stubborn, immutable desire to _live_, to see beyond this single fateful sunset, to see tomorrow's sunrise, an to see many days to come.

_Hope_, Haru thought, his mind filled with pretty waterbenders and lumps of coal.

With a deep grinding sound, a square slid open in Ba Sing Se's massive wall, like a window being raised. The window was tiny, scarcely big enough for Haru to scramble through, certainly not big enough for his emu horse, and it was already beginning to close, the strength of will required to keep the egress open against the massive weight of the wall beginning to drain his reservoir of chi, already nearly depleted from his flight and subsequent skirmish with he firebenders. Only a few yards were separating Haru from the wall now.

"I'm sorry my old friend," Haru whispered to the emu horse, his heart breaking in a way that he never though possible for abandoning an animal to die. The emu horse, though, seemed to understand, and gave Haru's hand one last sad nuzzle as they reached the city.

Haru stood up in the stirrups and yanks on the reigns, prompting the well-trained emu horse to come to an almost instantaneous halt. Haru leapt from the back of the emu horse and trusted the earth spirits to see him through the air. He straightened himself like a diver and flew the last few feet of air with the ease of and air bender, landing on his belly in the rapidly narrowing shaft that he had created in the wall. Friction put a violent stop to Haru's momentum, and the young earthbender felt the rough stone abrade his arms.

Ba Sing Se's walls were thick, though, and Haru still had a distance to crawl before he made it to the other side. He frantically scrambled through the collapsing tunnel, his face turning soot gray from the dust and pebbles falling from the top ceiling (such that it was). The light at the end of the tunnel was shrinking, and Haru had a sudden, horrible vision of being buried alive.

"No!" he bellowed, calling upon a final store of chi that he didn't even know he had to propel him though the tunnel like an earth train, and he exploded out of the other end of the wall like a torpedo, bringing with him a shower of dirt and rock. He briefly fell through the air—apparently the ground outside the wall was quite a bit higher than the ground inside the wall—until he felt himself impact a structure of cloth and wood, falling through an awning and into a what must have been a shopkeeper's stand. His fall was cushioned by a cart full of cabbages, limiting what would have normally been a broken neck to a minor series of sprains ad bruises. The cabbages and the cart were less fortunate, as the cart collapsed under his weight and the cabbages went flying everywhere.

The citizens of Ba Sing Se shopping in the area froze and stared at the spectacle, in shock. A girl in a fancy gown covered her daintily painted lips with her sleeve, and a passing carpenter, dropped his toolbox in surprise. The owner of the cabbage cart that Haru had so inadvertently and completely crushed let out a plaintive moan.

Haru barely noticed any of this. The last of his energy was gone. His chi was completely depleted, and he was in too much pain to move. He hadn't eaten or slept for days, and it was all catching up to him at one. He was both physically and emotionally drained. His thought process was reduced to random firing impulses and half finished thoughts, but he still managed o pull one final completed though out of the chaos of his mind before the world finally went black.

_So, this is Ba Sing Se. It's nice._

Reviews would be appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Ty Lee gazed down upon Ba Sing Se, balancing at the very edge of the city's sky-puncturing walls and allowed the wind to kiss her. The buildings and gardens stretched out beneath he, partially shrouded by a translucent morning mist. The walls of the city were so very high that localized climate zones were a common phenomenon within the city, and the temperature within the walls was much cooler than the arid wastes without.

The wind and the chill was far and away the most keen at the summit of those walls, and Ty Lee's skin was prickled with goosflesh. The winds buffeted her green silken robes and her heart shaped face was ruddy from the cold. It was not an altogether comfortable state in which she was perched, balanced so precariously in the chill air atop a single slender leg and looking down upon a world from the vantage point of a goddess, but the exhilaration was more than adequate recompense for her lack of warmth and solid footing.

She stretched her free leg high into the air, feeling the tendons in her thighs and calves stretch and tingle, then executed a graceful piroouete and a leap, coming down on her other foot in a mirror opposite of her previous poise. Again and again she spun along the edge of the parapet, her long chestnut braid whipping around her like a dancer's ribbon, her arms and legs moving to the beat of a ballet that she alone could hear. There were strains of beauty, of love and of cheer, of tear jerking drama and of soul lifting joy; all of the best parts from all of the best symphonies, operas and ballads were played by the world's greatest orchestras up to a stirring crescendo in the young acrobat's mind, and she closed her deep brown eyes to imagine herself on the stage, moving with the grace that was her natural given birthright but her motions endowed with the type of emotional complexity and artful depth to which she had always aspired but never attained. All eyes were on her and scarce a breath was drawn in the audience as Ty Lee's name hung in unspoken whispers on every tongue in the Fire Nation elite. The audience was not even limited to Ty Lee's homeland: in the crowd, she imagined Earth Kingdom Nobles, Water tribe faces, and even the Avatar and his friends, sworn as they were to destroy her people's empire, sat transfixed by the beauty of the music and Ty Lee's dance, hostilities and wars forgotten, united not by fires of swords or spears, but by one woman's transcendant grace that held the eyes of the world. She stretched out her arms to the sky and threw her head back, feeling the sun caress her skin and the wind stroke her hair when a tremor at the wall's distant base upset her balance and caused her to fall.

Quick as a cat and without concious thought, Ty Lee twisted around and regained purchase on the parapet with the toes of her left foot, then shifted her wieght to throw herself back atop the wall, landing in a perfect arabesque with her arms extended like the wings of a swan. Her orchestra had fallen silent, and her fantasy was utterly shattered. She was once more in Ba Sing Se, and wondered what trauma had so shaken those mighty walls that she at their pinnacle had felt it.

She squinted into the distance, her sharp eyes settling on a cloud of dust in the distance. It appeared to be a man in green, though his features were indistinct at such a great distance. He stood directly in the path of an oncoming cavalry charge. Ty Lee recognized their banner as a regiment of Fire Nation light cavalry. The poor fellow was doomed, and Ty Lee was sad that such a performance of uncommon gallantry should end in disappointment. He did not even hold a weapon, though she could have been mistaken: the walls were so very high that it was difficult to see anything.

She watched the cavalry column slow and shake apart as they crested a fold in the ground and scowled in disappointment at the display of shoddy riding. Azula, the Fire Lord's daughter, would have a few choice words to say about that, and an image can unbidden to Ty Lee's mind of the punishment to which she had subjected a Fire Nation officer who had, when ushered into the throne room, bowed to her brother Zuko instead of her. Ty Lee had been with Azula when the Dai Li agents had brought the man to a subterrainian cavern , and she shuddered to remember the ghastly tortures that he had inflicted upon the poor man. It had been well into the small hours of the morning when the man's lungs had finally collapsed, and Ty Lee had not slept well for three days after. When Prince Zuko had inquired as to the officers wereabouts, Azula had suggested the possibility that he had been taken away by earthbenders, a jest that the princess had no doubt found endlessly amusing, as she had ordered the Dai Li to utilize their earthbending skills to conceal and bury the body in the caverns. Even the memory made Ty Lee queasy, and she remembered how she had wept afterwards, both for the dead man and for her own inability to prevent his death. Azula, however, was a princess of the royal blood, and as such her judgement was an inviolate mandate of the gods.

It was then that Ty Lee recognized the significance of what she could of the scene before her: that fold in the ground had not been there a moment ago. The man in green was an Earthbender!

Earthbenders were hardly rare around Ba Sing Se, but this fellow seemed to be a cut above the used the Earth as a weapon, wielding it in the way that a warrior might wield a spear. The man had clearly honed his abilities in combat, but no Earth Kingdom soldiers remainded outside of thecity: Azula had recalled them all to within the city limits and had them closely watched. That meant that this earthbender was one of the partisans who fought the Fire Nation armies in the hills and villages, an irregular militiaman whose war was one of ambush and raids, hiding by day and striking by night. It was due in large part to rebels like these that the Fire Nation had not taken Ba Sing Se long ago. General Iroh's massive army had been plagued by raiders who had burned his wagon trains and ambushed his couriers. Ty Lee was struck by an immense desire to see this rebel in open combat, and she dashed inside of the wall and descended the stair cases within in sets of fives and tens, alighting on a balcony somewhere in the lower-mid region of the wall. Hurrying over to a window an snatching a spyglass from a nearby shelf, she trained the device on the Earthbender.

The man was really more of a boy, appearing to be only a few years older than her. He could not have been a day over twenty. Despite his young age, he moved with the power and decisiveness of a hardened warrior, confirming Ty Lee's suspicion that the man was indeed an experienced partisan. His tanned face had none of the refinement of aristocracy, and he had the look of an itinerant farmer. In spite of his low birth, Ty Lee watched the young man stop a company of the Fire Nation's finest mounted warrior class cold with a magnificant display of earthbending and galloped away from the disorganised cavalry.

The Fire Nation warriors struggled to reform their lines, but it was far too late. The Earthbender's companions had already reached the safety of the city, and the young man himself was in the very shadow of the wall. The riders would never catch him now.

Ty Lee felt the wall shudder again, and this tremor was enough to knock her down. A lantern fell from the wall and the room was shrouded in sudden darkness. She leapt to her feet scarcly a heartbeat after her back had touched the stone tiles, and she rushed back to the window, to be greated with the sight of a very dispirited troop of cavalrymen turning back to rejoin their legions in the hills, sullen with their prey denied to them. Of the young Earthbender, there was no sign.

Ty Lee knew that the gates had been closed and barred after the arrival of the Earthbender's companions, and knew therefore that there was only one possible explaination for the Earthbender's dissapearance: he had attempted to pass directly through the wall. A sudden unpleasant thought of a human being crushed to jelly and gristle flashed before her mind and she shook her head to clear it of the unwanted image. She instead tried to fill her head with thoughts of flowers and silks and all things pink, but the sour bile in the pit of her stomach remained. Azula never seemed to be troubled by such sentiments. Part of Ty Lee wondered if it was a weakness within her while another secret part of her heart, kept hidden even from her own conciousness, recoiled at the thought of one day becoming like Azula.

She descended the stairs beneath a fugue of unexpected melencholy. She knew that she should have been greatful that the Fire Nation troops had (indirectly, at least) defeated their adversary and that yet another dangerous partisan was dead, but she felt depressed that the young man's heroic display had been crushed by such an ignoble end. Even in the Fire Nation, such valor was a rare sight.

At the foot of the stairs, she was greeted by a man in a jade green road, his features shadowed by a conical laquored hat. As Ty Lee stepped into the sunlight, the man stepped out of the shadow of the barbican with a rolled up parchment in his outstretched hand. "My Lady," the agent of the Dai Li said with a bow of his head.

Though the secret police of Ba Sing Se had always given her a slight chill, Ty Lee put a sun-bright smile on her face and greeted the man with good cheer. "Oh, it's such a lovely day! Are you out for a walk on top of the wall too? The view is wonderful up there. The wind makes me cold, but it also makes me feel kind of warm and tingly inside. Do you know the feeling?" Ty Lee studied the man. "You know, I bet you don't. You Dai Li never seem to have any fun: you're always working. Spying, skulking, sneaking, slinking, seeking, but never singing, sleeping, or really seeing. You need to lighten your load and let yourself lay in leisure, lifting your life out of the litany of lies that seems to be your lamentable labor, lest you be lambasted as a lachrymal, lantern-jawed lobster."

"A Lobster, My Lady?" The Dai Li agent's voice was utterly without amusement.

The first rule of combat was to keep your opponent off-balance, and there were methods outside of jabs and pressure points to reach this end. Ty Lee gave him another giggle. "Oh, alliterations aren't for you? But, of course not: you're a great warrior. Maybe something a little more bellicose." She quoted the great Fire Nation poet Tsung Tsi Sing, whose works had been drilled into her head at the Royal Academy. "The shadow of my hate shall hang over thee as a cloud, and my endless fury shall lash thee as a storm_._" She grinned up at the Dai Li. "Tsung Tsi Sing's _'The Dragon King.' _Act One, scene five. I never liked it much. There's no dancing, but people still say it's a masterpiece. But, how can a play be a masterpiece if there isn't any dancing?" Ty Lee illustrated her point by doing a graceful piroette.

"Indeed, My Lady," The Dai Li replied, and Ty lee saw that she had wasted her time in trying to provoke any kind of reaction from him. The man offered her the parchment. She accepted, and the Dai Li tipped his hat in farewell and departed, vanishing into the crowd in the seemless fashion of an agent trained to espionage. Ty Lee frowned, not liking to be dismissed so casually. She could endure ire, anger, and even mockery, but to be ignored like a piece of talking furniture abraded a raw nerve deep within her. Any attention was better than no attention, after all.

She opened the scroll and read Azula's brief summons to the erstwhile Earth King's solar in the palace, and tucked the letter away within her sleeve. She would burn it later, destroying any evidence that a princess of the Fire Nation now ruled the Earth King's palace, and skipped off down the street, chirping a polite greeting to almost everyone she met.

* * *

She found Azula not in the Earth King's solar, but sitting upon the Earth King's throne, a seat that she seemed to enjoy more and more of late. For Azula, the trappings of power were becoming as important as the power itself, a disturbing change for the woman who had orchestrated the coupe of Ba Sing Se through subterfuge and discretian.

The Fire Nation Princess made a striking sight, garbed in a crimson and orange gown that flattered her figure and provided a sharp contrats against the Earth King's gold and powlonia throne. She was a a great beauty, with sharp features and midnight black hair drawn up into a coiffure that was her only concession to Earth Kingdom style. Unlike the others in her group, Azula almost always went about garbed in the clothes of a Fire Nation royal, venturing rarely beyond the palace where unwanted eyes might see her. She claimed that she had degraded her Fire Nation beauty by hiding it beneath native garb for long enough. A smile turned up the corners of her scarlet lips, and as always, the beautiful princess's smile chilled Ty Lee far more than her scowl. When Azula smiled, it meant that she was either lying, or someone was about to get hurt.

"Why, Ty Lee," Azula said by way of greeting, her voice cultured with the high class accent tones of the Fire Nation gentry. "How wonderful to see you. I am in a joyous mood this afternoon, and I anticipate pleasent dreams tonight."

Ty Lee swallowed. Somebody was indeed going to get _very_ hurt. She covered her apprehension with a smile. "Azula, that dress is adorable on you. Did you bring that all the way from the Fire Nation with you, or did you have Master Shinowa make it for you? He made this for me, and even gave me a discount as a visiting noblewoman. I think he want's patronage." She gave a little twirl to display the outfit she wore, loose silk of light green gathered to her by a snug bodice of forest green laced with golden threads.

Azula ignored Ty lee's inquiry into the origin of her wardrobe. "I have just recieved word from Marshal Thao Ze. He has met the Earth Kingdom's Sixth Division near the northern mountains. The _entire_ Sixth Division. They are under the command of a certain General Sun, one of the only Earth generals still holding his own in the field. Have you heard of him?"

Ty Lee wandered over to one of the many tables lining the room and selected an apple from a bowl of fruit. Mai was seated in a chair nearby, twirling a Dai Li dagger in one hand in an idle gesture that belied the hawk like alertness with which Ty Lee knew the dark haired girl to be listening. After more than a decade of friendship, there was little that Ty Lee did not know about her companions. You didn't survive a long term friendship with Princess Azula without being alert enough to notice the little details.

Ty Lee bit into the apple and, though she knew a several pertinent facts about General Sun from various dosiers provided by the Dai Li, pretended to think about the question, behaving as though the memory was distant and causing her great strain. "Let me see...General Sun, right? Is he the one who always carries a book of poetry around with him? Or is he the one who collects stray puppies?"

"Puppies? Mai inquired from her chair. "I don't believe that there is an Earth Kingdom General who collects puppies."

Azula smirked at this display of Ty Lee's scatterbrained inferiority and deigned to enlighten her friend on the subject. "General Sun is one of two Earth Kingdom Generals in the field with an undimished force, the other being General Fong. He does indeed carry a book around: a copy of Tsung Tsi Sing's _'The Dragon King.' _An odd eccentricity for a very dangerous man. Maybe your listening to gossip is paying off after all, Ty Lee. Keep your ear to the grape vine and you might very well learn where the Avatar is hiding."

"The Avatar is dead," Zuko snapped from where he stood off to the side of the throne. He turned to face both Ty Lee and his sister with crossed arms and what seemed to be a perpetual scowl. Unlike Azula, he was dressed in Earth Kingdom robes, and still seemed to scorn his Fire Nation alliegance in spite of the restoration of his honor. "He's dead. I watched him die. Enough of this." He strode foward, clearly eager to move on with the more pertinent facts of the discussion. "General Sun commands a sizable force, enough to be a serious threat, and with him at our northern flank, he's like a dagger in our backs. He should be dealt with immediately." This last sentence was directed more toward Azula than toward Ty Lee, and Ty Lee could sense that there had been a rather heated disagreement between the two sibligs prior toTy Lee's entrance.

Azula smiled. "He needs to be dealt with. On that much, dear brother, we are agreed." She turned to face Ty Lee. "General Sun is too powerful to assault directly. Out in the field, he has demonstrated his capacity to outmanuver and escape any trap that we attempt to spring. Marshal Thao Ze claims that he does not have sufficient numbers to drive him from the mountains. However, if Thao Ze were to be victorious, then General Sun would have only one line of retreat: the norther road to Ba Sing Se."

Ty Lee understood then what Azula's plans were. "Oh! Do we plan to have General Sun over for tea?" To Mai, she said, "Maybe the general will play Pai Sho with you, Mai. I'm sure that you're sick of playing against the same people in the palace over and over again. It'll be nice to have a fresh opponent."

Mai did not bother replying and neither of the Fire siblings reacted. Zuko was notoriously immune to laughter, and Azula seldom smiled in good humor. "We lure General Sun into the city, trap him here, and destroy him. Sun has no idea that the city has fallen to the Fire Nation. He'll come to us willingly."

At last, Mai spoke. "If he is defeated in the north. Thao Ze hasn't had any luck penning him in yet."

Zuko uncrossed his arms and walked over to a map of the Earth Kingdom that had been pinned up on the wall. He indicated the eastern and southern fronts of the Fire Nation's war of conquest. "With Omashu fallen and the Earth Kingdom's Third and Fifth Corps broken, we are recalling General Che Zu from the east and Gerneral Tsueng from the south. We're sailing them north with what's left of Admiral Zhao's forces, and sending them to reinforce Marshal Thao Ze. Thao Ze should have no problem driving Sun from the mountains after that."

"For the moment, nobody must realize that the Fire Nation controls Ba Sing Se," Azula said. "To that end, we need the Dai Li, but they are spread too thin. We need to bolster the ranks."

It was clear that this was another point of contention between brother and sister. "You can't just put up recruiting posters for the Dai Li," Zuko said. "It takes years for a Dai Li agent to prove himself trustworthy, and years to train them."

"The Dai Li are _never_ trustworthy," Azula returned. "That's one of the things that I like about them. I'm not suggesting that we give the Dai Li more brains, dear brother: I'm suggesting that we give them more muscle. An outer ring of Dai Li, if you will; told only what they need to know and never trusted."

"The Dai Li is already divided against itself," Zuko protested. "Half-trained recruits could easily join Long Feng's defectors and--"

"Brother," Azula interrupted, her voice cloying in its sweetness. "Perhaps this is something that we should discuss later."

Ty Lee sensed that she had just overheard a tidbit of information that could prove very useful. It would bear looking into, but it was equally clear that the safest course of action would be to file it away for future consideration. If one knew something that Princess Azula considered to be of vital importance, it would behoove one to adopt discretion as one's byword. Ty Lee pretended to be oblivious to the tension between Azula and Zuko, lifing one foot from the ground and doing an idle pirouette. "Hm, Dai Li...you need earthbenders." She twirled twice more, dancing across the room as she considered Azula's suggestion. "Pitting your earthbenders against General Sun's earthbenders?"

Azula nodded with a cold smile. "Precisely. To kill an archer, you send an kill a swordsman, you send another swordsman. To kill an earthbender..."

Zuko put the idea a bit more bluntly. "We need more benders, and the nearest uncommited brigade of fire benders is in Omashu. As it stands, we can't fight General Sun and maintain control over the city at the same time. We need the Dail Li, and we need earthbenders who are loyal to us. My uncle recruited earthbenders into his army during the Seige of Ba Sing Se, and my cousin Lu Ten even led a company of them through a breach when the wall was broken. We need to build a militia, and we need to build it fast. And, if we lose the Dai Li, we lose the city."

"Brother," Azula said, her smile was now as false as a golden facade on a cheap wooden chair. "That's enough. Dinner will be served soon, and I am certain that the Earth King's chef is _very_ eager to please his new masters. We can be assured of a delicious meal."

"No thanks. I think I'll eat in the city. I found the quaintest little tea shop, and they have the best coconut tarts I've ever tasted. I simply have to have another." Ty Lee twirled around and skipped toward the door. She could never stand for being cooped up indoors for too long, and if pressed for the truth, she would admit that she wanted to put some distance between herself and the royal siblings. The intrigue and politics had begun to irk her, and she longed once more for the simple life of the circus.

"Tarts and pastries," Azula scoffed. "With all the sweets you shove in your mouth, you'll soon be too fat to walk, let alone cartwheel."

Despite her innurement to Azula's verbal abuse, that one stung. Azula had always undercut her companions, but her barbs had usually been subtle and as tasteful as an insult could be. More and more, Azula was abandoning her subtle prodding for undisguised malicious cruelty, and her words had hit a sore spot for Ty Lee, who felt a certain vulnerability about her looks.

She stood there for a moment, but could not muster the neccessary feeling to return with a humorous or cheerful reply. She turned and left, fighting back tears. _Azula is your friend_, she reminded herself. _No matter how cruel she gets, she is still your friend, and one of the only friends you have. _

As Ty Lee walked the corridors of the Earth King's palace, she felt a terrible lonliness descend upon her. The walls seemed so tall, the halls so long, and the vaulted ceilings seemed so high. She felt small and unnoticed. "_You do not belong here, child of the Fire Nation,_" she felt the palace say to her through its impassive stone walls and polished hardwood floors. This was not her place, this city of the Earth Kingdom. Nor had she ever felt at home in the Fire Nation. She was a stranger in a faraway land, and she had not even the memories of a warm and comfortable home to console her, for she had never before slept beneath a roof that had felt like home. The underside of her nomadic nature was a lack of strong bonds to either places or people. Thus was it ever more important that she do all that she could to maintain the few friendships that she had, even if they caused her pain.

She left through the palace's open gate and went in search of dinner.


	3. Chapter 3

It was high noon on a cold day in the rolling hills where General Sun had decided to offer battle. The sky was the deep shade of blue that only the northern mountain air could bring, and there was not a cloud to be seen. It would be a bright and clear day for the slaughter.

General Sun was a hard, rough man who had lived his entire life on the battlefield, and he disdained such friviolities as erecting a pavilion or a command tent. Upon establishing his command position, he planted his war banner in the ground and declared to all who needed to know that he could befound beneath the standard of the Ba Sing Se's king, prosecuting the Earth King's war against the Earth King's enemies, and if any foe wanted his flag, they could march right up to him and try to take it. He stood with powerful arms crossed over a barrel of a gut, his long black beard making his pensive scowl look wild and intimidating as he watched the Fire Nation armies deploy in the valley beneath him.

They came in massive columns that deployed into battlelines at the opposite end of the valley, these warriors in scarlet. The artillery had appeared first, guncrews unlimbering ballistae, catapults, and trebuchets by the dozen, erecting their engines of war with the speed and efficiency of trained professionals. They lined the valley's edge, one next to the other with the shorter ranged catapults in the front and the massive counterweight trebuchets in the back. The cavalry poured onto the field resplendent in their imperial finery, swords and lances drawn to sparkle beneath the sun like a river of steel. The heavy cavalry mounted their rhinos, iron cuirasses and naked blades flashing in the sun. Then came the infantry, thousands men carrying pikes and swords, marching beneath streaming gonfalons and banners emblazoned with the flame crest of the Fire Nation. They filled the horizons, filing out and shaking themselves into their formations, and still they came, regiment after regiment of Fire Nation soldiery cresting the hills and preparing for the pagentry of impending violence. Brass bands played martial tunes and warhorns coordinated the movement of troops. Signal flags rose and fell, and the assembled might of an empire was rallied and pointed like a sword at General Sun's numerically inferior force.

"You cannot resist us," was what the dramatic parade of military power was meant to say to the Earth Kingdom's truth. "The Fire Lord's strength is absolute. Throw down your weapons and despair." General Sun knew that this naked display of strength was just that :a demoralizing tactic, and he treated his Fire Nation enemies' display with the respect to which he felt that they were entitle: he turned his back on them.

"Melodramatic, these Fire Nation brutes, yes?" one of his aides, a slight young man in a green tunic commented, the tremor in his voice belying his casual words. The man was a junior officer, and had not seen more of battle than a few skirmishes.

In response to the young man's words, General Sun turned his head to the side and spat. "Theatrics," he said dismissively. "They look pretty in their red uniforms but they die just like any other men."

The drums of the Fire Nation beat a warlike tattoo that, Sun knew from experience, would drive the great armored fist of the Fire Nation advance forward. The deep percussive bass reverberated through the valley. _Doom! Doom! Ba-doom! Doom! Doom! Ba-doom!_

General Sun looked down upon his own troops. He knew from outriders and spies that Marshal Thao Zhe commanded close to fifty thousand men, arrayed against the twenty thousand that Sun had brought to the field. Sun's men were assembled below him, arranged advantageously on the high ground of the valley, their stacked phalanxes waiting like a spring about to be released. His earthbenders were positioned higher on the field, with large piles of boulders and rubble that had been gathered the day before at their disposal. One of Sun's perishingly few advantages over Thao Zhe was an abundance of benders. In addition to being a viable infantry soldier, each earthbender could act as his own artillery piece. The few firebenders that had joined his ranks stood alongside the earthbenders, prepared to light aflame the special earthen projectiles that had been soaked in pitch, which the earthbenders would then employ as incendiary weapons. His mounted troops, mostly light cavalry atop emu horses, stood off to the right flank, ready to counter the Fire Nation cavalry.

Sun's aide fidgeted, his body rigid with nerves, and the general spoke of idle things in the past to distract the young man from his fear. "Marshal Thao Zhe has a great army, but he is not a great to the Fire Nation officers of old, he's a neophyte amature." He turned to look at the young officer. "Did you know that I once saw the Dragon of the West?"

The young man blinked in suprise. "General Iroh, the old Fire Lord's son?"

General Sun nodded. "The very same. The mightiest of the Fire Nation warlords. He assembled the largest host in the history of the war and pierced the very heart of Ba Sing Se's territory. He won almost every battle, and even his defeats forced us to yield ground. I cursed him nightly, but I'd be a fool to call him anything but a cunning foe. His entire campaign was a display of masterful tactics and engineering. It was through being defeated by him, rather than the teachings of my superiors, that taught me how to fight." The Earth Kingdom general gave a sudden barking laugh. "The Dragon of the West isn't here today, so I'll have to teach these pretty fire boys how real men fight."

Another warhorn sounded, and the two Earth Kingdom warriors watched as an entire brigade of rhino-mounted heavy cavalry joined the Fire Nation army and trotted stolidly into position on the left flank.

"His son, Lu Ten," General Sun continued as if five hundred mounted killers had not just trotted onto the field to join the army arrayed to smash him. "Fought his way through the breach. I was behind the third line, and I saw it all. He was swinging that sword around like the fate of the world and everyone he loved depended on his next cut. I'll never know what put that fire into him, but he and his boys carved their way through my best men like butchers. The little hellion even took my dagger off me when I surrendered. It was a good piece of steel, too." The general grew contemplative. "He took off into the city after that, looking for something. Or someone. I'll never know what. He died a year or so later. Iroh hasn't been seen for a few years either. I suppose he's dead too."

Trying to keep the fear out of his voice, the younger man said, "You almost sound sympathic. Did you admire the Dragon and his son so much? They were your sworn enemies."

Sun thought for a moment before answering. "I respected them. Not that I wouldn't have killed them both myself if the battle had turned the other way." He chuckled. "And I'm certainly glad I'm not facing them today."

Across the field, the bands had fallen silent. There were no more cheers, and the horns went unsounded. Almost all movement on the opposite ridge had stopped, and there was silence in the valley as the wind stirred the banners. The Fire Nation warriors stood there, weapons at the ready, waiting. The quiet seemed to stretch for an eternity, and the only sound was the faint creking of Fire Nation artillery crews cranking their windlasses.

Then, with a sudden whipcarck thatt made the junior officer jump, a single trebuchet released it's deadly payload. The flaming projectile arced through the airn and crashed to the ground behind Sun's lines, splattering burning pitch a dozen feet in every direction. The sergeants stalked among the Earth Kingdom lines, snarling at their charges to hold their positions and to act like men, not lily livered pansies who would run at the first sight of abit of flame.

Another trebuchet fired, this projectile exploding into an inferno in front of Sun's lines. A duo of earthbenders inverted the ground on which the pitch burned, smothering the fire. Otherwise, General Sun's veterans didn't react.

"Watch the men and the other officers," Sun advised his young charge. "They've all been here on the battlefield before. If they panic, then you can start panicing. Until then, hold your piss and stay in line."

A third boulder scorched the air and burst against the ground, completing the signal to begin the battle.

The gruff, burly General Sun then suprised his aide by quoting a literary passage. "'Now thou art come unto a field of death. Fatten thy blade with blood and gorge thyself with sorrow.' "

The officer recognized the passage from his time at the University of Ba Sing Se. "_The Dragon King_, act two."

Sun shook his head. "Act three, scene two."

There was another moment of all too brief silnce, then every trebuchet swung into action at the same time, arcing their cumbustable missiles into the air, while the catapults snapped forward to hurl their payloads across the field to incinerate their Earth kingdom enemies.

Sun's earthbenders were well trained. The general did not even need to issue an order. They leapt into action, stamping their feet on the ground in unison and thrusting their hands downward. The ground beneath the Earth Kindom ranks sank until the soldiers stood in a trench that exposed only their shoulders and heads, and another company of earthbenders made beckoning motions with their arms and a series of rock slabs jutted from the ground infront of the trenches, forming erstaz pavises.

Most of the Fire Nation projectiles missed their marks. The Earth soldiers had all of a sudden become much more difficult targets to hit. A few burning missiles found flesh, blowing apart several men in the rearmost ranks and burning several others. General Sun grimaced at the smell of burnt flesh, to which, after decades of battle against firebenders, he still had not become accustomed. It smelled a uncomfortably like pork.

The General raised his sword. "Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Save you ordnance!" The number of men that the Fire Nation artillery could kill was minimal as long as Sun's men were protected by the trenches, and Thao Zhe only had a few hours left until sunset. General Sun smiled. Thoa Zhe's decision to attack him had been a mistake. Sun had chosen both the terrain and the time. If Thao Zhe failed to defeat Sun on this day, Sun and his men would slip away after dark, and the Fire Nation marshal's palns would be frustrated. Thus, there was little to be gained by engaging in counter-battery fire. General Sun's earthen ammunition was best saved for targets of flesh and blood. Thao Zhe must soon unleash his legions.

The barrage continued, filling the sky with flames and scroching the earth black. Any wildfires that posed a danger to the men were extinguished by earthbenders, while the wounded were dragged bock to the surgeons. The general employed only two proper healers (waterbenders trained in the North). Waterbenders had become increasingly rare, and it would not take much fighting to overwhelm the two of them. The healers were complemented by a small group of battlefield surgeons who could perform more mundane operations, and Sun could already hear the screams beginning from behind the lines as the bone saws began to cut into the mangled limbs of wounded men.

A missile sailed past General Sun and his aide to explode a short distance behind him with a percussive force that felt like a punch in the gut. General Sun refused to allow himself to react to the near miss, and instead kept glowering at the Fire Nation battle lines with his arms crossed and his brows knitted. The thundercracks of the exploding projectiles sounded like the ending of the world, and the sun was soon reduced to a silver disk behind a veil of smoke that turned the sky soot gray.

Sun knew Thao Zhe's perscription for warfare: break the enemy with artillery then send in the cavalry to scour them from the field. It was a method that had served the Fire Nation Marshal well in the past. Thao Zhe had cut his teeth fighting the Water Tribe in the north, successfully driving their armies into the sea and forcing them to abandon their remaining continental holdings. He'd won great favor among the Fire Nation elite, and had been promoted to his present station. Against the water tribes, Thao Zhe's shock tactics had worked well, but an Earth Kingdom army corps was a different sort of beast.

Water and air might give way, and a fire might burn itself out, but the earth endured.

The Fire Nation artillery assualt seemed to last a lifetime. Each moment for the earthbenders and soldiers crouched beneath their barricades stretched into an eternity. The barrage was still causing casualties. Every couple of blasts sent a man to the healers or elsewise blew him into the next life with a fiery exodos, but there was nothing to be done but endure the unendurable. Every percussive blast could be felt in the belly, and the louder ones almost seemed to suck the air right out of the lungs of those closest. Gouts of flame and columns of smoke poured from two dozen plances in the lines, and the earthbenders were now struggling to fight the fires.

Just when it seemed that the hellish onslaught would never end, it did. The end came with its usual suddeness, one battery ceasing fire after another, until all along the line, the Fire Nation machines of war were still. After theearbursting blasts of the cannonade, the ceasation blanketed the field with something akin to silence while the ears of the combatants adjusted. Even with their eardrums as abused as they were, Sun's veterans knew what was coming. They hefted theirspears and unseathed their swords. Archers knocked arrows to their bows and earthbenders readied their payloads.

Beneath the silence, barely discernable to men bludgeoned into partial deafness, a war horn could be heard. Behind the veil of smoke, the sound of advancing cavalry could be heard. General Sun smiled at the unseen Thao Zhe. "Predictable to the last."

From the General's vantage point, the Fire Nation's cavalry advance could be seen. They descended the hill like a river of blood, bristling with blades and arcing around to aim at Sun's left flank.

Sun looked over to Colonel Iwa, who commanded the earthbenders. "Iwa, you know what to do."

Iwa nodded. "Indeed, General."

"Then do it."

Iwa turned away and strode towards the commander of the earthbending companies. "Earthbenders! Manuver one-sixty-six!"

The earthbenders leapt into motion. While the Fire Nation rhinos were ideal heavy cavalry mounts, they had a fatal weakness: they could not move well on sand. It was with this weakness in mind that an entire half battalion of earthbenders leapt into action, gesturing through an intricate set of mudras and stamping thier feet to focus their chi and drive it through the ground, altering the physical makeup of the earth down to the tiniest pepple. The ground beneath the charging cavalry trembled (though not from rhino hooves) and the top three feet turned to sand.

The rhino's stumbled and came to an abrupt near halt as the beasts struggled to find purchase on the soft ground, reeling in shock from the unnatural change. Thus encumbered, they became perfect targets for the second jaw of Sun's trap.

General Sun turned to his aide. "My compliments to Major Tsung, the Sixth Archers are to advance two hundred paces and fire."

The aide swallowed his nervousness and seized the bridle of his emu, swinging himslef up into the saddle. "At once, sir."

He rode off to the far left where sung had established his command, but found that the Major had anticipated General Sun's command and had moved the archers forward to the top of the hill of his own accord. It must have been a sobering sight for the Fire Nation cavalry, as the battleflags of an entire battalion of archers appeared on the horizon above them.

The warriors of the Sixth battalion were armed with heavy yew longbows that took all of a man's arm and back muscles to draw. The long arrows were tipped with wicked iron bodkins that could pierce heavy plate from two hundred paces away, and they would make short work of cavalrymen's armor when they were loosed.

Major Tsung, a tall thin man with an immaculately groomed mustache and a spotless uniform, stepped forward to give the orders himself. Inspite of his dandified appearance, he was a veteran campaigner who had fought at General Sun's side many times before, and he had never tired of leading his men into battle personally. "Archers!" he commanded with a loud, clear voice. "Notch! Draw!"

Below, several of the Fire Nation cavarymen began to whisper forlorn prayers. "Spirits preserve us!" one captain exclaimed, forgetting his dignity in the face of the death sentece on the ridge above him.

"Loose!" Major Tsung yelled."

The air was filled with the sighing hiss of several hundred arrows being loosed from several hundred bows. They filled the sky like a flight of birds and descended upon the men below like armor-tipped raptors. The ground seemed to sprout a crop of feathered shafts as the arrows found their marks. They fell among the cavalrymen with a vicious accuracy, piercing armor and shields. The captain who had made his appeal to the spirits was given the truth of his denial when a long-shafted arrow pierced the crown of his helm and the bloodily gristled tip punched through the skin beneath his jaw. Beside him, his sergeant went down with one arrow in the joint of his shoulder and neck and another one in his throat.

Almost before the first volley had hit the ground, the archers had fitted new arrows onto their bowstrings, and a second volley followed the first, and third came upon the second's heels. These men were well trained professionals, honing their deadly craft through hours and hours of training every day for years. This was their life and their livelihood. From early in the morning to sundown, they could befound at the archery butts, letting fly volley after razor-tipped volley in practice for the butchery of live battle. That skill made their motions automatic. The act of firing their heavy bows came as naturally to the men of the Sixth as trying one's sandal strings came to an average man in Ba Sing Se. These were the archers of the Sixth, General Sun's own battlefield killers, and they called no swordsman, pikeman, or rider their equal.

Marshal Thao Zhe's heavy cavalry division had been stopped cold, and the attack had been broken beyond salvage. When the surviving officers rallied the riders and led tham out of the charnel house that the valley had become, they did so as the leaders of a broken rabble, leaving with only a third of their number remaining.

General Sun gave a curt nod as he watched the Fire Nation cavalry ride off, their regimental colors still flying proud. "Look at those brave men," the general urged his aide as the young man returned. He supplied another quote from his favorite literary work. "'And so they rode, their banners high, their souls unbroken still; and with a cry savage rage, they charged across the hill.'" He smiled. "Be a good lad and have Colonel Lao see them off."

The orders were given and, from their concealment behind a swell of land, the lancers of under Colonel Loa rode forth, their nimble emu horses navigating with ease the terrain that had vexed the Fire Nation Cavalry. The Fire Nation mounts were blown and fatigued, many of them almost to wounded to continue walking, so when the Earth Kingdom lancers appeared like a dagger in their backs, there was no chance of reforming lines or escaping.

The Earth Kingdom officers on the hill watched as a long crescents of men in green uniforms rode out and arced towards the flank of the retreating rabble, their lang lances held high. They advanced in disciplined formation, riding knee to knee, and they kept their mounts at a swift trot until the last hundred yards. Then, with a great cry that transcended the need for actual words, they lowered their weapons and kicked their emu horses into a charge.

Colonel Lao's men were light cavalry, and as such they lacked the heavy weapons and armor of their Fire Nation foes. They were, however, nimble and quick, and their long lances pierced the backs and sides of the Fire Nation soldiers, where their armor was vulnerable, before the Fire Nation cavaliers could draw their swords and come about. General Sun was too far away to hear the screams, but he had witnessed men die by the lance before, and he could imagine with ease the shrill wail that came from mens' throats when a forearm's length of sharp steel atop an ashwood shaft was plunged into their sides.

The Fire Nation possessed the best armories and swordsmiths in the world, and their armor was strong. Only the heaviest of weapons, such as the bodkin arrows, could pierce it from the front. The weak point of this armor, the Earth Kingdom warriors had learned over years of warfare, was beneath the arms and on the sides, where only boiled leather warded the wearer. It was for these weaknesses that the lancers now aimed, leaning forward in their saddles, thrusting, twisting and retracting the blade, then thrusting again. They cut through the broken Fire Nation cavalry like a longsword through cheese clothe, slicing it neatly in half. Then, the second wave of lancers hit, falling upon the left half while the first wave circled around and plunged into the right. Both of the diminished halves were routed, and all seblance of formation was lost as the skirmish became a bloody melee.

Two Fire Nation officers tried to escape the carnage, forcing their rhinos into a desperate run for Thao Zhe's lines. Where their mounts found their hidden reserves of strength, Sun did not know, but he watched the two of them break away from the melee and gallop hell for leather towards the opposite ridge. The lancers, though, were unwilling to allow any survivors to escape their wrath. Five lancers went galloping after the fleeing officers and, though the emu horses were now showing signs of fatigue as well, the emu horse was by nature a swifter mount than the Fire Nation's rhinos, and the lancers began to gain ground on the Fire Nation officers. Recognizing the inexhorability of the lancer's pursuit, the shorter Fire Nation officer urged his companion onward, then pulled his rhino around and spurred the beast to a charge, pulling his sword free of its scabbard and raising it into the air in a defiant challenge. General Sun looked on with no small amount of approval. Friend or foe, courage was a virtue that he respected.

The lancers lowered their weapons and spurred their own mounts, two of them peeling off to pursue the other officer. The challenge was accepted.

The Fire Nation swordsman held his weapon out at arm's length, his elbow slightly crooked, the blade extended diagonally accross his body. In his left hand he clutched the reigns and his spurs were bright even in the dusty air. The lancers couched their weapons beneath their arms, the two in the center falling back while the two on the outside went forward and apart to envelope the young swordsman and keep him from escaping. Escape was not on this young man's mind, though, as he kept galloping straight at the center of the formation until the last minute, when the two sides were ready to collide. He nudged his rhino to the left and took the rightmost lancer by suprise. He deflected the lance tip with the side of his sword, then lashed his sword back as he passed the rider. The sword was well made and sharp; the lancer's head was parted from his neck and rolled off his shoulders in a spray of blood.

Before the others could react--before, indeed, the luckless lancer's head had even fallen to the ground--the Fire Nation Cavalier nudged his rhino to the right. The beast slammed into the emu horse of the next lancer. The heavier rhino shoved the bird off balance and snapped at the emu's long neck. The emu shied away, throwing off the lancer's balance, and the Fire Nation sword flashed out, taking the man's eyes with a lightning slash, leaving the lancer a screaming horror, dropping his lace and clutching at the bloody ruin of his face. His frightened emu horse galloped away to the west, the blind lancer slipping from the saddle and falling into the dust.

By this time, the Fire Nation rider was past the Earth Kingdom lancers. He swung wide, trying to get around them for another pass, while the lancers came about much more sharply, the agility of their mounts serving them in good stead. The Fire Nation officer found the lancers on his tail once more, and it was obvious that he would be unable to bring his exhausted rhino around in time to fight again. The lancers overcame him and lunged. He parried one lance, but the other pierced his side just over his kidney. The Fire Nation officer dropped his sword and arched his back in pain as the lance was ripped out and thrust forward once more, this one sliding under his ribcage. The other lancer rode up beside his and thrust his weapon through the young man's throat. The lances were withdrawn and the Fire Nation officer went tumbling into the dirt.

He might not have bothered with his sacrifice: the other team of lancers had caught up with his fleeing companion and fairly skewered him with a half dozen thrusts. The man was dead in his saddle and, in the melee, General Sun saw that all but a few of the Fire Nation riders who had been taken prisoner were dead. Marshal Thao Zhe's Heavy Cavalry existed no longer.

"Recall the riders," General Sun ordered a signalman. "And sound the advance for the infantry."

The signalman nodded and blew the neccessary notes on his war horn. They sounded long and mournful, echoing off the mountains inspite of the noise and the sound-absorbing press of men and smoke. Below, beneath the sound of drums and bandsmen, General Sun's entire infantry line began to move.

"Battalions will advance!"

If seen from the vantage point of a sky bison, General Sun's army would have looked like massive green square marching down the hill, leaving trails of trampled grass in their wake. Their spears flashed in the dying sun, and there was a savage beauty to it. They marched through the offal that marked the highpoint of the cavalry assault, and two light companies of General Sun's best Earthbenders spread out ahead of the advance as skirmishers.

The fires from the artillery barrage still burned, and a curtain of smoke veiled the valley. The smoke was all but opaque, and the enemy was hidden from the sight of the advancing infantry. The skirmishers, though, knew their business: they were veteren campaigners, each one of them. Most have been with General Sun for years, and several more had been hand picked and recruited by the General from all over the Earth Kingdom. Several had even fought for the enemy at one point, serving in General Iroh's army before it had been broken and disbanded at Ba Sing Se.

Soon, a thin projectile of flame punched through the white curtain, trailing a pencil line of black smoke behind it. Another came, then another. An earthbender cried out in pain as a blast of flame burst against his face, setting his hair afire and blinding him. Two more powerful blasts struck another earthbender, exploding against his chest and knocking him off his feet. His torso was a red and black charred ruin, and his dying hands clawed the air.

The firebenders emerged from the smoke by ones and by twos. They wore red and black leather armor, and most wore iron warmasks that sheathed their eyes and gave them the look of faceless executioners. General Sun's earthbenders were not intimidated. The firebenders fought with sharp, economics jabs and sweeps, the flames dancing along thier limbs like snakes and lashing out at their foes like flail. The earthbenders held strong, fighting back by tearing their projectiles from the earth itself, each man like a human trebuchet. Bullets of flame and cannonbals of earth flew back and forth, riplling the air and worsening the almost impenetrable cloud of smoke and dust. To breath was to inhale the arcid stench of battle, mingling with the smell of dead Fire Nation Cavalry. The hot smoke and embers burned the lung, while the dust that the earthbenders kicked up coated throats, and beneath it all was the ever persistant smell of burnt flesh and stale urine. Veterens from both sides counted their blessings that the weather in the mountain pass was so cold: if they had fought in the south, then their noses would already be assailed by the rancid smell of decomposing bodies. Putting your life in danger of grisly immolation and watching your friends die all around you was bad enough without your nose trying to convince you that you were wading through a field of rancid pork.

The firebenders fought like the aggresive conquerors they were. Avatars of a nation that had brought kings and emperors to their knees , they attacked with the ferocity of wolves. Their arms and legs snapped out, sending bolt after bolt of flaming death into the waves of earthbenders, but the earthbenders had fought this war before. Unlike their pyrokinetic counterparts, the earthbenders had a good grounding in defensive combat as well as offense. They raised slabs of earth to act as shields, the firebenders' flames splashing off of the unyielding rock without harm to the man behind, then the earthbenders would hurl their shields at their attackers. Pavise became projectile, and defense became offense as firebenders were drushed to bloody pulp or dragged off the field with shattered bones by their comrades.

Inch by bloody inch, the cloud of firebenders was driven back. Marshal Thao Zhe, unwilling to order his men to fall back, even if it was to establish a new defensive line. It was a matter of honor, but a refuseal to entertain any act that might be construed as fleeing from battle did not translate into a lack of cunning. The Fire Nation commander ordered his few remaining battalions of cavalry to circle around to General Sun's right flank, and strike the General from the side. They were firebenders, all, and they would be fighting as dismounted dragoons. Then, while Sun's men were occupied, he would launch his main army in an attack column that would smash the Earth Kingdom general's army once and for all.

"Make it so," the tall, gaunt Fire Nation leader ordered. Signal flags were raised and warhorns were sounded.

From his vantage point atop the hill, General Sun saw the firebenders massing on the western rim of the valley. He grimaced and stroked his beard. "Dagger between the ribs, eh?" To his aide, he said, "Send Colonel Renji's riders." General Sun's own warhorn were sounded, his wooden horns producing a lower call than the brass instruments of the Fire Nation, and General Sun's other regiment of cavalry rode forth. The mounts of Colonel Loa's men were still tired from their earlier charge, and General Sun had other plans for them. Renji, who was a transplant from Kiyoshi Island, was a lean man, hungry to strike at the Fire Nation and carrying in his heart an almost religious reverence for the now-broken line of Avatars. It was his fervent desire to punish the Fire Nation for engineering the destruction of Avatar Kiyoshi's heir, and he was a quickwitted, agressive warrior.

Renji and two battalions of light cavalry departed uder the veil of smoke and dust, looping around behind the Fire Nation lines by making use of a game trail that Fire Nation soldiers were unaware of. It was narrow going, with Renji's men forced to ride in a single file over many parts, but the spirits were with them and they remained undiscovered. They passed through a copse of dense trees and waded across a shallow stream fed by a clear mountain waterfall. General Sun extended a Fire Nation-made spyglass that had been purloined from a captured supply train and watched Renji and his men form into two lines of battle at the lip of the valley. Renji ordered men to cut loose the tethers of the Fire Nation's rhinos and spur them away with sharp smacks with the flats of their swords. The, just as the dismounted dragoons descending halfway into the valley learned of their danger and whirled about to confront it, Renji's men charged.

The iron discipline of Kiyoshi Island could be seen in how Renji had trained his unit. They rode knee to knee in perfect formation, just as their Fire Nation counterparts had earlier. Their swords were drawn and shouldered, bright flashes of steel in a world made dingy and dim by smoke. The firebenders tried to rally to repell the cavalry, but before they could finishe the formation, Renji's men were almost upon them. At the last moment, Renji spurred his men forward, and they charged across the remaining space to overwhelm the firebenders. Swords rose and fell hacking down to fill the air with screams and spurts of blood that glinted like rubies in the firelight. The Fire Nation's dagger had been blunted and broken, and now General Sun turned his attention to the giant hammer that was advancing on his men.

Thao Zhe had launched his salient in three columns, on in front and one on each flank. The skirmishers were still fighting their chaotic battle in the smoke filled cauldron that was the center of the valley, and General Sun gave the order for his advance to halt. Three long notes sounded, and Sun saw his men come to a stop, and the officers began forming the men into lines of battle. General Sun collapsed his glass and tucked it away into a belt pouch. There was nothing more to be done. The remainder of the battle would be up to his battalion commanders and the men who fought in the ranks.

The columns were massive, each formation containing well over five thousand men, bristling with spears and armor. They marched forward into the valley beneath banners of crimson and gold, sublime in their confidence and prodded along by sergeants when patriotism alone was no enough to move them. Thao Zhe was an exacting disciplinarian and a fastidious man. The uniforms of his men were resplendent and spotless, their tunics crisp, their armor clean, and their fastenings unfrayed. They were a far cry from the raggedly uniformed hellcats in General Iroh's army. The brass notes of the Fire Nation bandsmen could be heard over the screams, and each rank of the column marched in perfect step.

General Sun crossed his arms. Such displays of glorious pageantry were rare, and the thought of mauling it brought a smile to the general's weathered face.

Two more companies were sent forward to join the skirmish line, and the firebenders were driven from the field, forced to rejoin their columns while the earthbenders used their land altering abilities to create instantaneouse fieldworks. Trenches were sunk and mounds of packed earth were raised. Barricades and bulwarks went up, and breastworks of solid stone were erected to protect the attackers who had once more become defenders. "You're always attacking uphill when your attacking earthbenders," an old saying went.

General Sun's battalions piled into the trenchworks and manned the breastworks. The infantry were in the lowest trenches at the front, along with the light company earthbenders, while the archers were in the middle trenches. In the rear were the earthbenders who would act as artillery. They were already ripping large chuncks of rock from the ground and forming them into the bone smashing missiles that would be thrown at the Fire Nation's columns.

Next to General Sun, the once-frightened aide gaped at the works and understanding dawned in his eyes. General Sun grin and dealt the young man a resounding slap on the back that made the poor boy stagger forward a step. The general laughed. "What? Did you really think they were going to march right into a Fire Nation attack column? Ha!"

The columns continued forward much as before, except for the fact that the were now advancing on a fortified position rather than a mass of exposed soldiers. The Earth Kingdom soldiers had chosen their ground well. While it was lower than the Fire Nation postion, the slope was not steep enough to present any serious obstacle, and the boulders on the valley floor--most natural, some put there by earthbenders--narrowed that section into a bottleneck that would allow no more than a single column to attack at a time.

It was the center column that attacked first, advancing to a quicktime march while the other two slowed to fall behind. To the Earth Kingdom men in the trenches, it seemed as if the world was filled with Fire Nation soldiers. A long line of crimson uniforms and sharp pikes stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, and behind these men cam rank after rank of their fellows.

At last, the order came from an Earth Kingdom officer. "Fire!"

Every earthbender in General Sun's army let loose with all his strength, and the sky was filled with stone. From the rear ranks came massive boulders and slabs that were hurled into the Fire Nation ranks, crushing and bouncing through the column, leaving mangled bodies and pink pulp in their wake. The earthbenders in the front trenches let loose with rocks that burst apart after taking flight, turning into a cloud of sharp, high velocity buckshot that flensed the front ranks of the column into blood-soaked horrors. The rocks puched through lungs and throats, shattering through skulls and blowing holes through the Fire Nation warriors. The screams of the wounded were high and shrill. A blinded man staggered about the front with only a mass of red ruined flesh where his eyes had been, while another man who had lost a leg tried to pull himself to safety using his spear as a crutch. A Fire Nation officer caught a head-sized boulder in the chest, and was ripped from the saddle of his rhino, though the remains of his legs remained in the stirrups. A firebender whose stomach had been torn open knelt in the rocky grass, trying to gather his entrails back into his body.

The earthbenders didn't let up, and the volume of projectiles never slackened. Like a vengeful hail they came, and the front ranks of the Fire Nation column were mauled by the very earth they sought to conquer. Each successive rank was slowed by the ruined corpses of those who had gone before, and the valley floor soon had the look of a butcher's table. Crushed and broken body parts reached knee high in some places, and dark smears of blood painted the ground beneath innards that had seemed thrown across the field like unwound coils of rope. The sight was ghastly and the smell was horrendous.

The combat reached a frenetic pace as the Fire Nation column was fed into the meet grinder that the vally had become, and the attack first slowed, then stopped altogether. The path was choked with the dead and it was at this moment that the Earth Kingdom officers ordered their infantry forward. The bombardment ceased and masses of men in green came swarming out of the trenches and charged the broken column. Their pikes were lowered and the beleaguered Fire Nation soldiers had no chance of forming a defense of their own. The Earth kingdom soldiers slammed into them like vengeful devils, thrusting and twisting with their pikes. The sharp blades sliced into soft flesh, and the charnel house that had once been a mountain valley found its offal double in no more than a few minutes.

The Fire Nation soldiers broke.

No force in heaven or on earth, however well trained, could endure such inhumane slaughter for long. It began as a trickle of men sneaking to the back, then became a full blown flight as Fire Natio soldiers threw down their weapons and sprinted for safety, fleeing General Sun's killers with no heed for pride of discipline. The officers called for a belated retreat, but the retreat had already become a rout. The entire column dissolve and , as the fugitives ran into the columns behind them and the panic spread, the remaining columns collapsed as well. The Fire Nation army had become a chaotic mob of fleeing men.

Into this mob came both Renji's light cavalry and Lao's lancers like hungry wolves. lances thrust and swords hacked, and broken men were cut down as they tried to run. Thao Zhe's army had been routed, and it would be impossible for him to restore order and continue the attack. The horns called for a general retreat, but all semblence of order was lost as men fled into the hills to escape the bloodthirsty cavalrymen.

General Sun watched with satsifaction as the Fire Nation arms effectively ceased to exist as a coherent military body, and turned to his aide. Sun was no fool, and he knew that he could not hold against the overwhelming number of Fire Nation warriors who were arrayed against him. He had bought himself much-needed time by luring Thao Zhe into battle before he could be joined by the large Fire Nation armies that spies told him were approaching from the east and the south. "Have the baggage train start moving down the Li Shing trail. We're returning to Ba Sing Se." There really weren't any other options. The north was lost for the moment, even if the battle had been won.

The aide nodded and rode off to obey. General Sun turned back to the battlefield and gave one last quotation from _The Dragon King._ "The banners are ripped and broken, and my heart is filled with dread. My dreams have turned to ashes, and I sleep among the dead."

Those lines were spoken by the hero after a defeat in battle at the beginning of the story. However, the hero would later go on to rebuild his forces and win a great, if tragic, victory at the end of the story. So too would the Earth Kingdom rise again. The Northern Mountains might have fallen under Fire Nation control, but General Sun vowed they would not remain so.

"I'll be back, Thao Zhe," the general promised the Fire Nation commander from afar. "I'll come back, and you'd better not be here when I do."

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

Every muscle in Haru's body felt torn, and every bone felt broken. The pain in his joints was like broken glass ground into the sockets, and his flesh felt like one gigantic bruise. Even before he was fully awake, he was aware of the pounding headache that beat a deep bass between his temples. A moan escaped him and he tried to sit up. To punish him for this temerity of motion, the drummer in his head beat a rising crescendo that struck him dumb and deaf with agony. His entire body was an orchestra composed of demons manically working their instruments in a symphony of pain. He fell back and devoted all of his attention to the simple task of breathing. "Am I dead?"

He felt something cool press against his forehead, and the sensation was soothing. "No, you aren't dead, young man, but it doesn't seem to be from a lack of effort on your part. Lie still: your fever is just breaking now."

It had been a woman's voice that spoke, but Haru was hard pressed to determine whether the voice belonged to a mortal human or the ghost of a half-remembered fever dream. He moaned again as his mind protested the strain of reason, and all coherent thoughts scattered like birds at the sound of a thrown rock as he plummeted once more into oblivion.

He could not have said how long he lay there, or indeed where "there" was. Time did not begin to exist for him as anything more than a theoretical abstract of which he had no more than the vaguest recollection until he felt sunlight touch his face. There was a healing property of sunlight, or else the sporots had decided that Haru's soul was not worth collecting at the present, for it was not until that morning that Haru opened his eyes at last and beheld the world around him with the eyes of a dead man blessed with an unexpected resurrection.

He was in a small room , with bleached walls and a thatched roof. The bed on which he now reposed and previously languished was a simple wooden cot of the type used in healers' domiciles across the Earth Kingdom. On a wicker nightstand beside him was a copper pitcher containing water, which Haru seized with eager hands and devoured with the thirst of one returned from a desert grave. The liquid was room temerature and had the metallic tast that city water often did, but its potability was not for one moment in doubt, and it felt to Haru like the balm of the gods. He swished it around in his mouth for a moment, allowing the parched tissue to absord the lifegiving water, then swallowed.

Or, tried to swallow, in any case.

The water seemed too much for his abused throat, and he gaged, coughing up the water all over his sheets. He fell back as agony gripped him once more, squeezing his eyes shut at the pain. His throat blazed with thirst. Hunger gnawed at him, and he noticed for the first time that his hands had begun to shake.

The door at the far end of the room opened and a young woman entered. Upon seeing that her charge had awoken, she brushed a strand of brown hair away from her face and turned her head over her shoulder. "Mistress Kue Lin, the earthbender is awake."

From somewhere beyond the door, Haru heard another female voice reply, and he recognized it as the voice from his dreams. He could not discern the words but, given his present state of mind, he was proud of his capability to identify the room's newest occupant as a living woman, rather than one of the cackling devils wreathed with flame that had haunted his nightmares.

The young woman shut the door behind her and walked over to the bed. She was a year or so younger than Haru and she walked with a slight limp. Her robes whispered as she sat on the stool beside his bed and placed a new pitcher of water on the table. She produced a white cloth and dipped it into the water. "Lay back," she instructed, and lowered a corner of the rag to Haru's lips. He was quick to grasp the girl's intent, and he sucked the moisture from the rag, savoring the moisture that balmed the arid tissues of his mouth and throat. When the rag was dry, she remoistened it and repeated the process. This went on for several minutes, until Haru's disued throat was loose enough to take small sips from an earthen cup.

"Easy," the girl advised him. "Easy. Don't drink too fast. You're in Ba Sing Se, and there is plenty of water. My name is Song. I'm an apprentice to Kue Lin. We are healers."

Neither name meant anything to Haru, but be was too enraptured by the feeling of water sliding down his dry gullet to press for details. He took another drink and said nothing. The girl held the cup for him, and his throat soon became loose enough for him to take larger gulps. He devoured the water, cup after cup, and even licked the some of the residue from the girl's fingers.

Song giggled. "Easy there! You'll drink up all the water in the city if you continue like this. Drink slowly." She brushed a strand of Haru's hair back from his forehead. "Are you a soldier?"

Haru smiled, barely noticing the pain in his cracked lips so great was the ecstasy of his rehydration. His voice was hoarse and cracked, but the pain was receding. "Nothing so exciting. I'm a coal miner." Concious that the price the Fire Nation had put on his head might be enough to tempt even the citizens of Ba Sing Se, he fished around his mind for a false name. "My name is Lee."

The corner of Song's mouth twitched, and Haru sensed that he had lost some of the girl's good will. "Is it now? There seem to be a lot of Lees running around the Earth Kingdom, getting into trouble."

"Pardon?"

Song shook her head. "I apologize. Pay me no mind: your name is your own business."

The door opened once more to admit a middle aged woman in a blue robe. She had the hair and copper complexion of a Water Tribe woman, though the chestnut in her hair was yielding to the gray. She was trim, and there was something stately about her, despite her plain clothes. The sole concession that she made to the land of her ancestry was the blue theme in the otherwise Earth Kingdom cut of her robes.

Song bowed to the woman. "Mistress Kue Lin."

Kue Lin smiled and returned the bow. "Song. How is our guest faring?"

Song indicated the empty pitcher of water. "His name is Lee, and he's suffering an acute dehydration. His fever has broken, and he seems lucid enough. I have not yet inspected his wounds."

"Doubtless they are unchanged from last night." Kue Lin moved toward the bed and Song vacated the stool for her and stood to the side. Kue Lin sat by Haru's bed and looked into his eyes. He felt the uncomfortable sensation that she could see right through his skull and into the thoughts beyond. Her gaze, though, was not unkind. It was not the gaze of a judge who condemned: it was the gaze of a woman healer who saw afflictions that she wanted to heal. "You say that your name is Lee?"

Like Song, Haru could tell that Kue Lin did not believe him, but would not press his story. "Yes. I'm a coal miner from the western provinces." That last part was true, from a technical standpoint.

"Well, you get in a fair amount of trouble for a coal miner. Song, if you please?"

Song bowed and pulled Haru's blanket back. Beneath it, he wore only his green leggings, and his torso was wrapped with linen bandages. Song unwound the bandages with car and revealed a large, star shaped burn of layered red and yellow scar tissue flecked with dark brown scabs stretched from his sternum to the middle of his ribcage. The flesh was the angry, shiny hue of new skin, and Haru saw that the burn was quite close to his heart. Smalled burns and welts covered the rest of his torso and arms, most of which he could not recall sustaining.

Kue Lin leaned over Haru, inspecting his burns. Several areas of his large wound were still open, with cracked skin showing the wet red beneath. Haru's eyes widened in suprise at the wound. Until that moment, he had not noticed the pain. Now that he turned his mind to it, though, he could still feel the ghostly echos of the fires that had seared his flesh.

"You heal well," Kue Lin observed as Song prepared a poultice. "It seems that you've had a bit of a spat with some firebenders. You were almost dead when we found you."

"You found me? You brought me here?"

Kue Lin nodded. "Song was out shopping when she came upon you in an alley. From what witnesses told her, and I later, you came flying out of a solid wall and demolshed a poor man's cart. You were only semi-concious, and you were raving about some firebenders and your father, babbling nonesense. You seemed quite distressed, and you wouldn't let anyone near you. After drifting in and out of conciousness a few times, you fell down and didn't get up. Song, dear, add a bit more water to that and it will grind easier for you. Excuse me, Honorable Lee. After you passed out, we had a few men from the market carry you back here, and here you have lain for seven days."

The length of time startled him. "Seven days? I haven't moved for seven days?" He tried to sit up, but a starburst of pain that began in his chest and jolted through the rest of his body like fire forced him down again.

"Easy, young man. You're still hurt." Kue Lin waited until Haru no longer showed any signs of trying to rise before she continued. "No, you have not been moved, except by us to change your bandages and prevent you from getting bed sores, for seven days. Song fed you by dribbling honey and tea into your mouth, but you would not have lasted much longer. We used poultices to keep the infection at bay. Song, would you fetch that syrup?" Kue Lin smiled at him. "Song made this syrup herself. It should be finished settling by now, but we couldn't give it to you while you slept."

Song returned with a dark glass bottle in hand, and she measured out a dose into a spoon. She knelt by Haru's bed and began to lift the medicine to his lips. Determined to reclaim at least a shred of his dignity, Haru assured her that he was capable of feeding himself, took the spoon from her and administered the tonic himself.

He tried and failed to keep his expression nuetral as the bitter taste of the root joined hands with the tang of alcohol to wage war on his tongue. Never before had he tasted anything quite so bitter, and the astringent after taste that lingered in his mouth was almost as bad as the thick syrup itself. He tried to supress an exclaimation of disgust, but was unable to maintain a demeanor of perfect stoicism. "Ugh."

His discomfort showed, and Song began to giggle. Kue Lin could not repress a smile, and she soon began to chuckle as well. Haru like to think that he was a big enough man to admit defeat, so he donated to the moment a bemused smile at his own discomfort, prompting Song and Kue Lin to laugh all the harder. While it did not seem all that funny to Haru, whose tongue continued to be haunted by the ghost of the syrup, laughter was a contagious condition, and he soon found himself laughing along with them.

The laughter provided an undeniable relief to him. He had stood at the gates of death, looked into the eyes of oblivion, and had been prepared to walk into that endless void with a determined spirit, but had been pulled back from the brink at the last possible moment. The shadow of death had lingered upon him and, though he had inherited his father's earthly practicality, the few remaining bastions of superstition in his mind could not help but wonder if his spirit had not resided in the realm of the dead for a short while. Now he realized that he was indeed among the living, and the realization lifted from his heart the irons that weighed it down. He seized the water cup and gulped it down, as much to relish the sensation as to wash away the horrid taste of the medicine. This caused Song and Kue Lin to redouble their laughter. As healers in a time of war, they were too used to watching young men die.

Haru place the cup aside, the water tasting like wine. He just lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and marveling at the fact that he was alive. In an instant, the room became the most wonderful manor in which he had ever passed a night, Song became the most stunningly beautiful woman he had ever seen, the bed was the softest on which he had ever reposed. To his consternation, the medicine tasted no better.

After a moment, when the euphoria of not being dead wore off, he turned to face Kue Lin. "Are there any other earthbenders here? I was seperated from my friends, but I saw the gates open for them."

Kue Lin looked at him askance. "The gates, you say? You saw them open."

"Yes, well I--" he paused. _Had_ he seen the gates open? He had assumed that they must have, for his companions had been nowhere in sight when he had reached the wall. "I'm certain of it. They were men on emu horses. A few were pretty badly wounded--err, injured. They must have come in. "

"Honorable Lee, the gates have not opened in three weeks."

Kue Lin's words hit him in the gut. More than three weeks? His first suspicion was that Kue Lin was mistaken. The gates must have opened and closed without her noticing. But, when he saw Kue Lin's expression, all thoughts of that nature vanished like smoke in the wind. This was a woman of keen observation, from whose eyes few details escaped. It was unlikely that Ba Sing Se's massive gates had opened and closed without her notice. Perhaps the earthbenders had entered through a postern gate? In any case, it was clear that Haru's companions were not under Kue Lin's care. If they were in Ba Sing Se, they were safe enough from the Fire Nation. Haru would strike out to look for them after he had rested well enough to walk.

After all, he was in the Earth King's capital city. People did not just disappear without a trace.


	5. Chapter 5

People don't disappear in Ba Sing Se.

Haru reflected upon that assertation as he limped through the streets of Ba Sing Se's lower circle with the aid of an ash wood cane. The buildings were of the dilapidated, ramshackle sort that he was used to seeing in shantytowns and mining camps all across the Earth Kingdom. They were thrown up quickly and in violation of all recognized magisterial building codes and with no thought to the future. They were the constructs of men in a hurry and who fully intended to be either gone or dead before the next year was out. Rough mud, hewn timber, and rice mats lashed over bamboo frames were the order of the day, and even these flimsy construction techniques were not built as solidly as they might have been. Overall, the buildings conveyed a sense of impermanence, and that was far from what he had expected to find within the walls of one of the most ancient cities in the continental spanning Earth Kingdom.

His tattered robes had been mended as best they could. He had learned that Song had taken her needle work to them while he slept, sewing up the worst of the rents and patching the holes that had been burnt into the fabric. They had once been yellow and green, but a year of campaigning on steadily decreasing resources with a bunch of men who didn't know whether the thread was supposed to go into the needle or the needle into the thread had left them with more patchwork than original fabric, most of it cut from brown homespun that left his robes a mottled butternut. In any respectable town, he would have counted himself among the beggars for his dress, but he found his ragged clothes not out of place in the Lower Ring.

A sea of humanity moved through the city streets daily, and this river of the living was flooded by the influx of refugees from every corner of the world. There were clothes from the northern and southern provinces, from the eastern territories to the Water Tribes. Every culture in the world was represented in the slums of Ba Sing Se: the only unifying factor of their dress being the poor state of the clothes themselves. The best dressed person by far that he met on the street was a beautiful young woman with her face powdered and her lips rouged. She wore a dress cut in the Omashu fashion and had batted her eyes coyly at him when she mentioned that he could have her for the night for a bargain price. Haru had hurried on his way, disturbed.

Was this Ba Sing Se, jewel of the Earth Kingdom, throne of the most powerful potentiate in the civilized world? Not even the Fire Lord commanded more wealth and territory that the Earth King, but the royal city was falling to pieces right before Haru's eyes. The disillusionment was total. He had long prepared himself for disappointment, realizing that the fantasies of a utopian city that he had constructed in his provincial mind were just that-fantasies-but he had not expected the Impenetrable City to fall so far short of even his most realistic expectations.

He claimed a stool at an outdoor vender's stall and looked out at the crowded street. It was dirty and cluttered, smelling of unwashed bodies and privies in bad need of mucking. The vendor, a thickset man with a receding line of wiry hair and arms that looked capable of snapping Haru's spine with a single jerk stuck his head out of the serving window and looked the young man up and down. Finally, he spoke. "If you're looking for the Sui Fong sake, you're out of luck. That stuff comes from the Fire Nation, and the shipments ain't been coming through, what with the war-_uhh_-I mean all the new tariffs on imports lately. Got some nice Southern rye here, though. Pour you a glass."

Haru started. "It's not even noon yet."

The vendor shrugged. "So? No mixers, then?"

"I'll have a cup of tea, please. What's the filling in those buns?"

The vendor smiled with pride. "Genuine beef from the old Air Nomad territories. Good grazing land out there, I'm told. And don't you listen to Sheng across the street: I swear on me poor mother's grave that it ain't cat meat." He picked up his voice and hollered at the vendor across the street. "You hear that, Sheng? It ain't cat!" He shook his head muttering. "Lousy, no-good slanderer. Trying to ruin an honest businessman's name. So what if there ain't so many alley cats around here no more? Don't mean nothing. Doesn't imply anything untoward about the food. Paranoid, that's what folks are these days. Poison in the wells, evil eyes making cattle die and babies get sick, rumors about firebenders trashing tea houses, and everything's a damn Dai Li conspiracy these days. People need to get their heads out of the clouds, that's what they need to do."

Haru made an effort to forget what he had just heard about the buns. "I'll stick with the tea for now."

The vendor shrugged and poured the tea. Haru sipped it; it was lukewarm. He sat in silence for a few moments, then decided to search for some information. "Many outsiders come to Ba Sing Se lately?"

The vendor scoffed. "You came, didn't you?"

"How do you know I wasn't born here?" Haru retorted.

The vendor laughed. "Nobody but an outsider would ask a question like that, and that accent is a dead give-away. You're fresh off the farm, ain't you? Only a month or two in the city?"

"Fresh out of the mines, actually. I barely got here. The Fire Nation has so many cavalry patrols out there; they must be tripping over each other." Haru was about to take another sip of his inferior tea when the look of sudden alarm in the vendor's eyes gave him pause. A year as a rebel soldier had instilled into him an instinct for reading his environment for trouble. Many were the times when a nervous gesture or the flick of an eye in the face of a person who had no reason to be apprehensive had saved his father's men from a Fire Nation trap. Haru was instantly on guard, but did not allow his now-heightened state of alertness to show. "Did I say something wrong? I didn't mean to offend you."

The vendor leaned close. "Look kid, I ain't no government toady, but there are some things you just don't talk about in public. If you're trying to look tough or be a rebel, save it for your friends."

Haru didn't understand what was going on, but he gleaned enough from the implications to know that expressing his confusion was just likely to bring down more unwanted attention upon him. He feigned comprehension and apologized. "I'm sorry. You're right: I think I've been listening to my friends too much."

The vendor smiled. "Hey, no harm done. Ain't no Dai Li around here today. Just be more...err, what's the word? I heard it this morning...ah yes! _Discreet._ Be more discreet from now on. There ain't no shame in following the law of the land, if you get my meaning."

Haru did not, but he nodded nonetheless. "Yes. You're exactly right. I'll be more discreet in the future."

The vendor clapped a hand on Haru's shoulder. "Good on you, kid. Here, take a bun on the house."

The bun with a queasy feeling in his stomach. "I had a big breakfast." Vendor's reply would have been,

Whatever the vendor's reply would have been, Haru never learned it. All conversation on the street ceased when a woman's bloodcurdling scream cut through the air, wrenching his head around to see a man in a common laborer's smock standing over the slain body of a portly man dressed in a rough spun travel cloak. As the victim laid there bleeding and finally breathed his last, the cloak fell open to reveal the black robes of a civil servant. The killer held a bloody sword in his hand and couldn't have been more than a few years older than Haru himself. The bureaucrat had been slashed open from shoulder to hip and the assassin starred down at his bloody work with a wide eye expression of amazement on his face. Haru recognized that look. He'd worn it himself once, after a raid on a Fire Nation supply depot when he had seen for the first time an enemy soldier lying dead by his own hand. _He's scared. He's never killed anybody before._

The assassin's hands were trembling but with a resolute squaring of his shoulders, he mastered himself and spat onto the corpse's lifeless face. "Traitor! Heaven has judged you guilty!" The globule of spittle landed just below the bureaucrat's eyes, tricking down his florid cheeks to mingle with his blood. "Traitor."

The woman selling cheap straw sandals across the street and who had presumably been the one who screamed, gave her own pronouncement of guilt, though not upon the dead man. "Murderer! Assassin!"

The assassin snarled at her and pointed his sword at her in a clear threat. "Silence, woman. I'm defending the city that was surrendered without a fight. I'm fighting the war that everybody else is too afraid to fight."

War? Defending the city? Haru wondered if this young man was a soldier like him, struggling to staunch the tide of the Fire Lord's conquering armies, then dismissed the idea just as quickly. He's cut down a civil servant of the Earth King, and was just a common murderer. Haru had seen soldiers turn into vindictive thugs before. After fighting day after day and night after night, a sense of entitlement came to you, and you started to feel like the civilian world owed you a little something extra for sacrificing your sweat and blood in their defense, and a snide sort of contempt for those who didn't fight was not far behind that. It started easily enough, with the warrior expressing Impatience with his civilian brethren, pushing and shoving himself to the front of lines and bullying those around him. After all, what did these cowards do to deserve his respect? If not for him, so went the warrior's logic, these simpering fools would be enslaved or dead. After that, the warrior might decide that he didn't need to pay for his food or for his drinks. After all, didn't the shop keepers and tavern owners owe him their lives anyway? The least they could do was give him a free drink. And free meals, in perpetuity. A valiant defender of peace and freedom shouldn't be required to go about wearing rags, so the man helps himself to some fresh clothes, gratis of course. Heroes didn't need to pay rent either, and if the landlord had a problem with it, he could go out to the front and defend his own land from the Fire Nation. While the warrior was at it, he might as well have those nice new leggings in the corner, and that vermillion sash. And, the shopkeeper's daughter was pretty enough, so why not throw her into the bargain as well. Finally, the warrior reaches his zenith of casual brutality and violently turns on the people he once swore to protect, cutting them down like the cowardly dogs that he thought them to be. The motive might be a disrespectful word, an accidental jostling on the street, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No matter. By the time that this mad dog who once called himself a noble warrior is through with them, they're nothing but more meat for the hogs and buzzards. Haru studied the young man, trying to gauge whether he was a one who had just crossed that line from warrior to killer.

The young man felt his gaze and turned to glare at him. "What are you looking at?"

Haru scratched the back of his neck. "Is that a trick question?" The moment he spoke, he berated himself for a hopeless idiot. Here he was trying to find his companions and eventually make his way to the magistracy, and he was getting himself involved with a murder. Or an assassination from the look of it. It was probably no coincidence that the victim just happened to be a civil bureaucrat slumming in the outer circle.

The young killer now turned to face him fully, and Haru's eyes were drawn to the blood that dripped from the blade of his sword. "You think you're funny, boy?"

_Boy? You're about an hour and a half older than me._ He held up his hands in a placating gesture and offered up a self-deprecating laugh. "Me? Not hardly. I just talk too much sometimes, and the words always seem to come out wrong. I just want to eat my breakfast." He grabbed one of the buns that the vendor had offered him and shoved it in his mouth…and immediately wished he hadn't. The tough, stringy meat in the half-cooked dough tasted far to vile to be anything but what had been found in the midden heap behind the nearest in last night, and his cheeks bulged like a gerbil's as he fought not to spit it out. Dredging willpower from depths in his soul that he hadn't even known he possessed, he chewed the bun and forced himself to swallow. He summoned a smile to his face and sat back on his stool, leaning back with his elbows on the counter. "Delicious." _Where in the great spirit's name are the constables?_

The assassin looked at him with disgusted contempt. "You don't care, do you? About the revolution, about the conspiracy of lies that holds this city in thrall. _The tyrant's task is a simple one, for he lives in the land of the blind._"

Haru didn't understand and strongly suspected that this young man was simply crazy. "Yes. Good eyesight is very important. My mother always told me that a man who eats a healthy diet centered on fresh greens will never go blind. I'll remember your advice." He rose from his stool and started to back away,

The assassin wasn't about to let him. He stalked towards him, matching the earthbender step for step, with his bloody sword pointed at his chest like an accusing finger. "It's a poem from the Sixth Dynasty, written during Chin the Great's war. It's forty-four lines long, and considered a masterpiece. Don't you sheep know anything? Does no-one below the middle ring ever crack open a book. Why are we even bothering to fight for you all?"

Haru something rough ad hard against his back and realized that he had come up against a wall. "Stay back."

The assassin smirked at what he thought was Haru's evident cowardice, and it only emboldened him. "Stay back? Or else what? I'm the one with the sword."

Something about the swordsman's arrogant, bullying demeanor offended him on a deep, almost primal level, reminding him as it did of the warden and the Fire Nation soldiers who had run the floating prison camp that he and his father had once been incarcerated on, and he found his fists clenching in anger. He decided that he had back up about as far as he was going to, and not just because he was standing against a wall. "I don't know about Sixth Dynasty poems, but here's an old saying from Avatar Kyoshi, who killed Chin the Great: _an earthbender is never unarmed._"

With that, he leapt forward landing with his knees bent, as heavy as a mountain and as light as a feather. The chi flowed from his core, through his feet, and into the ground, which rolled with a deep tremble that threw the swordsman down. He landed hard on his back, dropping the sword and crying out in pain as the back of his skull impacted the very unforgiving earth. Haru raised his hand and tendrils of dirt leapt from the ground and buried the swordsman's hands and feet. He made a fist and the dirt hardened to stone, pinioning the assassin to the ground with rock solid bonds.

The vendor looked from the trapped assassin to the ragged, scruffy looking young man he had been chatting with just a moment before. "Well, I… I'll be eaten for the Earth King's potater!"

Sharp whistles pierced through everyone's ears, making Haru wince in pain, for it was at just that moment that the authorities of Ba Sing Se had decided to arrive, blowing their wooden whistles and yelling at anyone who would bar their way to stand aside for official business. When they sprinted around the corner and came into view, Haru heard the vendor suck in a breath.

These men looked different than normal Earth Kingdom guards. They wore long mantles of forest green with the cipher of the Earth King stitched in gold thread on the front, and their faces were shadowed by low hats bordered with more gold thread. Even when running, they moved in lock step and they came to a halt at some unspoken signal, arrayed in a semi-circle before Haru and the downed swordsman. Reflexively, Haru looked behind him and saw that the other end of the road was blocked by a similar force of guards who had approached in silence while everyone was distracted by the first group. Each squad seemed to be made up of four pairs of men, and Haru could sense from the feel of their chi that they were earthbenders. Although he had been praying for their arrival just moments earlier, he found himself chilled by the expressionless eyes that they directed at him. Those were eyes that saw the world only in terms of distractions to be ignored or dangers to be neutralized. He stepped back from the assassin, making sure to stay well away from the sword and kept his hands where the guards could see them.

"What's going on here? One of the guards demanded.

Haru, who wanted no more courses of trouble than he had already been served that morning decided that the best course lay in telling the honest truth. "Sir, I'm just having a bit of breakfast."

The guard was unimpressed. Before he could say anything, the woman from earlier spoke up. "Sir, that man on the ground killed that person in the brown robe over there." She pointed to the bureaucrat's corpse. She then shifted her finger to Haru. "Then he attacked that young man."

The chief guard raised his hand and signaled for two of his men to check the corpse. "It's Gao Yangei," one of the men reported. "Killed by a single stroke."

The assassin's eyes were filled with fear now, all of his righteous anger and arrogance gone as if it had never existed. He craned his neck to look up at Haru. "Please," he begged. "Please kill me. If you have any sense of honor or decency in you, you'll kill me now. Don't let them have me!"

The chief looked down on the trapped man then up at Haru. "I'm assuming that we have our assassin here."

Haru held up his hands. "I didn't see anything. I'm sorry."

The chief looked at the woman, who tried to look away, then wilted under his stern glare and nodded. The Chief then drew back a foot, which Haru now saw was coated with slate grey stone, and fetched a sharp kick to the trapped swordsman just below the ribs, making the young man cry out in pain. "Brotherhood scum," he sneered at the assassin. "That's what you are, correct? Not talking? Don't worry; we'll have plenty of time to talk, you and I." To his men, he said, "Take all of these people into custody for questioning. We'll need all the details and statements from all of them."

The street was filled with gasps, pleads, and protestations of ignorance. The chief heeded none of them and as the guards began binding the bystanders' arms behind them, Haru spoke up. He should have remained silent, but he found himself vainly trying to protest the involvement of so many innocent people. "These people didn't do anything! It was that man on the ground who killed your friend. Let them go."

The chief studied him. "I thought that you didn't see anything, boy, and you're in no position to give orders to the Dai Li. Men, arrest him too."

Haru's eyebrows tried to leap off of his head and his jaw dropped open. "What?" He didn't resist when the Dai Li—whoever they were—looped a length of rope over his wrists and cinched it painfully tight. The assassin was given much rougher treatment. The Dai Li dispersed his earthen bonds with a few casual gestures then hauled him to his feet. He was given a slap across his face that rocked his head from one side to the other, drawing blood. Haru wondered at the force of the blow, for the striker had seemed to put no real muscle into it, until he saw that the Dai Li all wore gloves padded with the same stone as their boots. Despite his apprehension, the earthbender in Haru was fascinated by these earthen pieces of equipment, and was filled with a foolish curiosity about how effective they were. _Idiot,_ he berated himself. _You're just as likely to find out by seeing them use it on you._

He sighed. "So much for breakfast."


End file.
